“Stop following all the rules”

“Stop following all the rules!” My mom would shout during her interior decorating shows from the stage. Growing up in the early 2000’s I would accompany my mom to every speaking engagement she had and listen to all of her tips & tricks.

For some reason, I thought I was bad at all things regarding home interiors. “I’ll just mess it up” I would think to myself. After a while that negative talk would just resonate with me. Eventaully I would be known for not getting it right with tools or projects because I just thought that must be true about me. Negative talk = negative performance.

Then when I joined my mom’s business post-college graduation there were times when I was forced to help out with the business’s aesthetic and DIY needs. Although I was hired for marketing, we were a small team, and everything needed to be hands-on. The showroom would need some zhuzhing and I would get excited to help rearrange. Even though I thought handling tools would mean I was going to make a mistake, I knew that a room being refreshed was a wonderful feeling. Furniture for sale would need touch-ups and I felt inclined to grab a paintbrush. Eventually, I went from zero skills with tools/decorating to designing our showrooms and teaching full classes of beginners how to paint their furniture. I wrote their class curriculum for how to teach it!

The video is when I got a hang of what I was doing and working on custom pieces!

Going from zero experience to picking up tools and learning in my mom’s shoppe was the most fun way to learn about myself. It unlocked in me a passion for home that I didn’t know was there. In fact, it never left…

When Max and I finally became homeowners I decided we were going to paint our ceiling black! After all, as mom always said, “Stop following all the rules!”. From then on it was, “What other oddly creative thing can we do that will make our home, us?”

The team at

Say Yes to the Dresser!

The day this was taken I went to work, helped them open their second business, & moved all in the same day.